I started my new job yesterday as a (don’t laugh) dinner lady at my local school. It’s fun, the ladies I work with are friendly, and the kids are sweet. Well, they’ve been sweet the last couple of days, the ladies say that it’s because there’s a new face around and when they clue in to the fact I’m here for a while, they’ll start causing trouble again. Two of them have already cheerfully introduced themselves to me, which resulted in this fun exchange:

Boy: “Can you guess what my name is?”

Me: “Hmm… is it… Joe?”

Boy: *look of shock* How did you know?!

Me: Ahh, I have my methods. *winking at the lady who told me his name earlier*

(Changed the name because, it’s a kid, I don’t want to share their names online.)

You may think that based on my recent posts about being a terrible cook that being a dinner lady is an inappropriate fit for me, but last night I made a delicious dinner and didn’t burn anything or leave anything raw. Nobody died – that’s the mark of a good-enough cook in my opinion. “Nobody’s died here” should be the name of a restaurant. You can market it by adding the word (yet) in brackets on all the promotional material and give out leaflets in the door that say “Will you be the first?”

Working in a school, and in the kitchen none the less, has also meant acquiring a voice for big people and a voice for little people. I’m not much of a talker and my voice is not at all authoritative. I yell at kids to “walk, don’t run!” and the kids run faster. The only problem is, when talking in my little peoples voice it’s hard to switch off, so I end up talking to teachers in my little peoples voice and

I have a hat that is also a scarf. It’s amazing and I love it. It was a present last year at Christmas, an awesome present and it makes me look like an idiot which is possibly half the reason why I love it. There are, however, a few downsides to the hat/scarf, namely- it’s impossible to keep the scarf bits from falling back down in front of you leaving your neck exposed. So I’m constantly having to wrap the scarf back around my neck, which pulls out my ear phones and leaves me in a general cuffuffle.

I’ve spent a good portion of today making Christmas decorations. Here’s the tree:

More disasters in the land of Sarah’s kitchen; this time… Jacket potatoes! You’d think baking potatoes would be painfully easy right? Well, nothing is too easy for Sarah the Dinosaur, who managed to wrap the potato up in too-much tin foil, put it in a pyrex dish which prevented the heat from actually getting to it and then microwaving it for not enough time so it still came out raw. Ah well, it was still tasty (I microwaved it for longer after that, don’t worry).

I was all ready to write this post about the hilarity of me doing yoga, but I actually found that yoga is fun! I did three sun salutations which are basically super beginners yoga. It was kind of amusing, seeing as one of the positions was supposed to look like this:

And ended up looking like this:

Very elegant.

So, instead of getting to laugh at me about yoga, laugh at me because I am apparently incapable of poaching an egg. This is the way I’ve been taught how to do it for years:

Boil water. Stir the water around in a circle until you’ve got a mini water-tornado or whatever those things are called. Crack an egg into the centre and the water will spin the egg around while cooking it to make a nicely made poached egg. Yum.

Whenever I use this way, here’s what happens:

Boil water. Stir the water around in a circle until mini water-tornado appears. Crack an egg into the centre and the entire egg expands throughout the water and I end up with frothy egg white all over the place and this tiny bit of poached-yolk. Not quite as yum.

So my boyfriend decided to teach me a new method of poaching eggs. It went well, sort of, except I had no idea whether or not the egg was cooked so had to keep asking Mike ‘is it ready now? How about now?’. This method of poaching eggs had me floating the egg in a little container, but we don’t have any little containers that won’t melt in boiling water, so I used a heat-proof ladle instead. Because it was heat proof, it took ages to actually cook the egg and so the actual process of cooking involved me standing there for 15 minutes attempting to get everything else ready with one hand because the other hand had to hold the ladle.

Tomorrow I think I’ll stick to boiled eggs…

Christmas joke of the day (in case you’d thought I’d forgotten):

Q: What happens when you drop a snowball into a glass of water?A: It gets wet!

Every day inside my advent calendar there’s some stupid little joke. When I say “stupid little joke”, what I actually mean is that they’re hilariously bad and I say it out loud and Mike rolls his eyes while I giggle like a little girl. And because I like sharing, I’m going to share them with you here. You’re welcome.

Q: What do you get if you cross a snowman with a shark?A: Frost bite!

Q: Why did the golfer wear an extra pair of trousers?A: In case he got a hole in one!

Q: How do snowmen get around?A: They ride an icicle!

Q: What do snowmen eat for lunch?A: Iceburgers!

Q: What kind of paper likes music?A: Rapping paper!

Q: What do you get if you eat Christmas decorations?A: Tinsilitis!

Awesome. I bet you can’t wait for tomorrows joke.

Also inside my advent calendar are teeny little chocolates. Like, I’m talking around the same size as a babies pinky. I’m fully aware of how much of a pig this makes me, but I want a proper sized chocolate, dammit! It’s probably something to do with the fact that if they were properly sized chocolates, the main target audience of advent calendars – kids – would end up getting much fatter or something.

Or because small amounts of chocolate over a series of days would be better than huge pieces, regardless of how old you are. However! This is clearly a great product idea. Advent calendars for adults. Except, instead of porn on them, there’s grown up sized chocolate. I mean, I’m sure the porn-filled advent calendars would sell well too, but I wouldn’t buy them, and really that’s the only reason I’m excited about this idea. If you want porn filled advent calendars, go shop in an adult store or something. If they don’t have them, suggest it and make thousands over Christmas next year.

Have you started Christmas shopping yet? I haven’t, which probably means this month is going to involve me screaming around the house like a mad woman. Last year, the shopping got finished about a week before the 25th and it was hell.

What’s worse is, I was all “Oh, next year I’ll be ready.” It’s next year now, brain! Where’s all your damn motivation?!

Oh, that’s right, in the same place it is for cleaning the house, getting healthy and writing every day…

Next year, I’ll be ready. Promise.

Christmas cards, on the other hand – I’m totally getting there. I always make my Christmas cards for my immediate family, because I’m a giant dork, and I’m sure my parents are always ‘oh god, another one of Sarah’s homemade cards, whhyy doesn’t she just buy them from the store like a normal person?’ but, hey, I’m a terrible daughter who likes to torture her family with badly made cards.

This year, I’m making one card for all my friends as well, only I’m being a bit lazy and just making one design with a slight variation on each. But, what’s even better is, I’m incorporating the spirit of the impending apocolypse by drawing zombies wearing Christmas hats on them. Here’s a rough sketch of what will eventually be the best Christmas cards ever:

Festive and topical.

My local supermarket has had carol singers in the entrance collecting money for charity and the Santa looks painfully miserable. Though, when I went in it was at the end of their shift so he was doing his shopping still in full costume and it was awesome! Santa shops at Sainsbury’s, everyone! He buys six packs of booze and cheap baked beans! I wanted to take a photo but thought it would be a bit creepy to take a photo of some guy in the supermarket, even if he was Santa. Even Mr. Claus needs some time off, especially this time of year.

I wasn’t nervous about the impending doom until I wrote this. Only 19 more days until the end of the world! And by that, I mean Christmas.

Me and the boy watched The Amazing Spiderman last night. It wasn’t THAT amazing. It was probably better, in some ways, than the one with Toby Maguire in it, except the guy who played Spiderman wasn’t that cute, except when he was being nervous. Because that’s how you judge the quality of actors. By their cuteness factor.

Actually, I can’t decide which one I liked more (I’m talking about movies now, not actors). I could totally do a lame thing here and start pretending I’m a huge comic book geek who’s read all the comics, but that would be a lie. The only thing I know about spiderman is that he lives with his aunt and uncle, he got bitten by a spider, his uncle died and he now he likes to chase bad guys. And usually he likes girls called Mary Jane except in the new movie there was no Mary Jane, and I don’t know who this new chick is, but eh, she’s kind of confusing. When she wasn’t wearing incredibly short skirts and attempting to be the sexy scientist, she was kind of endearing.

On a serious note, the storytelling of this one was kind of odd. There were scenes that didn’t feel all that useful. Maybe it was setting it up for the sequel or something? Eh. I guess it was more gritty, but Peter just ended up coming across cocky and arrogant. When he wasn’t trying to be super nervous, that is.

Dear Sarah, this blog is not a place for you to rant about other peoples stories. Love, you.